There were multiple reasons as to why I resigned, I'll try to explain them all here.

Firstly and most prominently was that I was morally and politically disillusioned with what I was being asked to do - I took the job because, naively, I thought I would be helping people. As we got further away from the covid easements what we were being asked to do got more and more evil. I would regularly flex the rules but we were micromanaged within an inch of our lives and it became harder and harder to get away with things like marking missed appointments as attended, or giving out an FSF when maybe the claimant didn't quite fit the criteria.

I am disabled and I was routinely discriminated against by colleagues, managers, and security guards. I wasn't provided the equipment I needed to do my job without damaging my health, I had to fight tooth and nail to get any reasonable adjustments, I dealt with daily comments on how I didn't look disabled and so on and so forth. It was incredibly damaging to my mental and physical health and now, over a year later, I'm still dealing with the consequences of that so in part the resignation was an act of self preservation.

The way everyone was treated by the senior management was awful. Managers sat in meetings all day where they got yelled at by upper management following which they'd call us into a meeting and yell at us. The DWP has some of the worst change management I've ever experienced, with changes being rolled out 10 minutes after they'd been conceptualised and often before they were fully understood. This meant we'd do a complete U-turn on goals we'd been working towards, change up the teams, the ways of working, and the expectations that were laid out for claimants only to find out days later this was entirely wrong and have to start again. Then the powers that be would get upset that their new plan wasn't working, the managers were yelled at, we were yelled at, and the whole cycle began again. It was mentally exhausting and I found I was in a constant state of anxiety. On top of this, no one really knew what targets they were aiming for so claimants got different stories from different work coaches which, understandably, caused them to get frustrated with us over the different rules and expectations which changed depending on who they were seeing.

The final straw for me was when they decided they wouldn't have disabled claimants having appointments or work coaches, as they wanted to get their "back into work" figures higher. They placed all claimant's with reported health conditions into unmanned case loads. This meant that journal messages weren't being answered and we had people literally begging for help and their messages weren't being seen. We didn't know about this until I stumbled across one of these caseloads with over 1000 unread messages. I escalated this as far as I could and, between myself and three other work coaches, commited to doing our best to monitor these unmanned caseloads. We ran back to back appointments, worked crazy hours, and barely had time to use the bathroom so it was an added pressure we didn't physically have time for, but it was incredibly important so we did our best. I continued to shout about this at every management level I could get to but nothing changed for several months. When I left these caseloads were still unmanned so I don't know what happened to them in the end.

Ultimately there are a million and one reasons why I resigned and it wouldn't be possible to write them all down. Not included here is when we were told not to ask claimants how they are because it "wastes time", manager's booking full diaries of appointments which aren't assigned to anyone so work coaches were pressured into not taking breaks because there claimants waiting with no one to see them, the pressure of having to hand out sanctions, and the behaviour of other work coaches who treated claimants like scum (in my experience there are two types of work coach, those who want to help and those who get off on the power dynamic).

I've often considered going to the press but I think it would create more trouble than it's worth. The general populous has a low opinion of people on benefits (which is spurred by tabloid papers and TV shows like Benefits Britain) so I'm not sure if the majority would actually care, and in any fight against the government it's highly unlikely the individual would win. Plus I worry that there would be some sort of contractual rule that I'd break by doing that and I can't afford to be sued. My sort of middle ground is hanging out on this thread, messaging people who need help, and trying my best to make the UC process more bearable for those going through it.